(Image source: http://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/2469/2017-collection-past-six-months-dank-crypto-memes)

I'm going to cut right to with bullets to provide a gist of what I'm saying and then elaborate with a break down of them for those who want more information, below.

Disclaimer: The assumption is that you've already decided you want to invest, you're just trying to figure out when a good time is to do so. Also, I'm talking about long term investments.

In general, in the long term, everything goes up so long as it doesn't go bust. So the question is ultimately, do you believe in this company, currency, or whatever investment as something that will be around long term.

Here is the gist of what you should do if you believe this:

• Invest over time, start now, and don't just put all your allocated money in at once, hedge your bet by slowly doing fractions of it over time.
• Investing overtime reduces your risks
• The caveat to that is your research, you might through it decide the market is especially cheap right now and put a more sizable chunk in at once.

Breaking it down:

Investing your money bit by bit over time is a way of hedging your bets because what if the price plummets right after you buy. Well if you're doing it in stages it won't matter.

Example:

We'll use a made up coin, exampleCoin, it's currently today worth $100 (note: this example also applies for stocks). You decide you believe in this coin and will invest $1,000 into it. To hedge your bet, you decide to put it in stages of $100 buys.

Week 1:

We'll do this example in weekly increments so today you pay $100 and have one coin.
Total exampleCoin in wallet: 1

Week 2:

Next week it raises to $200, you think neat I made $100 and continuing on your plan you buy another $100 worth which now because of the price rise gets you less than the previous week, only 0.5 coins.
Total exampleCoin in wallet: 1.5

Week 3:

The week after that it crashes and is worth $50, you're in it for the long hall because you believe in it so you don't panic or if you do you pull yourself together, and keep on schedule investing another $100, this now gets you an additional 2 coins because the price is cheaper.
Total exampleCoin in wallet now: 3.5

Week 4:

Next week the price goes back up to $100, you now have $350 worth of coin even though you invested only $300. Woot! You realize how smart you were investing in stages, and put in another $100.
Total exampleCoin in wallet now: 4.5

The Caveat to the above example:

Take a look at any market and you'll see things go up and down. That's why the example I gave above is also given as advice from folks like Warren Buffet. At the same time you can see how it'd suck if the price went up the whole time you were doing this. You'd essentially be thinking, dam I could have bought more coins or shares if I did it all at once. You'd be right but how were you to know this? The strategy I gave above is usually the safest because prices usually go up on the long run so long as the entity survives, still, it's your job to make your own decisions, and based on your research you might realize the coin or stock you are buying is just too cheap to pass up not making a larger investment than usual.

Still:

Even with this caveat I like to remind people about the current price today of bitcoin which is just over $6000 and to with it think about how much money all those people would have made if they'd followed this long term investing advice given above of steady consistent investing. Even with the bitcoin crash of 2013 where it went from $1200 to under $200, if people had just kept investing increments they'd have made huge gains today even if they invested at the peak then.

Have fun playing the game and please remember the commonly given advice to not invest more than you can loose because in the end it's still a game. You can follow my advice and still loose.